HFD briefs City Council on deadly motel fire report

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- On Tuesday, officials from the Houston Fire Department briefed city leaders on a report at city council.

City Council members didn't hold back on their questions or criticism of the Houston Fire Department in their first briefing on the the nearly 200 page Southwest Inn fire report.

Also for the first time, council members heard a mayday call from inside the building. The mayday call came at 12:23, 15 minutes and 29 seconds after first responders were dispatched to the Southwest Inn on May 31, 2013.

A 193-page report revealed problems with radio communications.

"It was a new system," says Executive Assistant Chief Richard Mann. "We were still learning the ins and outs and the bugs of the system as a department and as a city."

There were 579 "Bonks" that day.

"That represents 579 pieces of communication that somebody was trying to make and they were unable to because of the radio already being tied up," Mann says.

"I am really concerned that I'm hearing over the last 4,5,6,7 weeks or so that the digital radio technology that was deployed in the fire department, a few months back now, had so many shortcomings in it," says Councilman C.O. Bradford.

Tuesday, council members grilled Mann about what went wrong and what's been fixed. Mann says they've worked with Motorola to reprogram radios, and more upgrades will be available later this year.

"I'm concerned that we were 30 days on the job with the radio that we're not comfortable with, and now we're putting priority stations on the radio, and now we're putting on a mayday channel, and now we're doing all these things," adds Councilman Brenda Startig.

Mann says they've also made improvements to radio coverage in some major areas like the Galleria and inside the Medical Center. But he tells us some buildings still have issues.

"I don't have an exact number of the buildings, but we have some buildings where we have coverage issues with the radio system."

Mann told council members that this also showed the need for more hands-on training on incident command, tactical and task level communications, and of course mayday operations.

The big question, though, is how to pay for it.